Editor’s note: this is a transcript of a Facebook Live event with Impact Point Group’s President & Chief Event Strategist Erica Spoor and our new VP of Client Service & Delivery Kimberly Schmitz. Click here to view the original recording. IPG also published its latest Digital Event Forecast on September 16.
Erica Spoor:
Hi, I'm Erica Spoor, founder and chief event strategist of IPG. We're a Denver-based consultancy, that specializes in event and engagement strategy. For the last decade and a half, we’ve been committed to the art of creativity blended with the science of measurement and strategy in order to build event experiences that deliver business impact for our clients.
We remain staunchly committed to that vision today even amidst these COVID times. We've leaned in on strategy in the last six months, in particular. We're excited to be here today to talk more about that.
One of the things everybody knows is that our industry has been virtually upheaved with the pandemic. During this time, when the initial onset happened, we deployed our team of event strategists to start actively monitoring as many events as we could.
The IPG Digital Event Forecast shares our observations and analysis of how digital events have evolved since the onset of the pandemic. In part, we did this as an industry resource for our colleagues that were looking for a digest to turn to for best practices.
Today, we are live with you to share a bit of what we are seeing in our Digital Event Forecast and also, we’re introducing Kimberly Schmitz, our new VP of client service & delivery.
Erica Spoor:
Kim and I met a couple of years ago at Denver Startup Week. I was moderating a panel with some of my clients, talking about event strategy, and this gal came up afterward and she introduced herself. And I was like, “Oh, we know each other.” We felt for sure we had seen each other before.
So, that was the start of a really nice partnership.
We've done some great collaborations on projects together. At the time, Kim was running Spin Event Management and we had a nice, complementary relationship with her doing the planning and us doing the strategy. Since then, we've gotten even closer and Kim came on board in June to run our client services and success functions.
Kimberly Schmitz:
Yes, it's been great. It's been a wild ride! I love our team and I love being a part of the strategy and design side of things. It's been a great experience.
Erica Spoor:
Good! You have 20 years of corporate event and marketing experience, so you are bringing a lot to the table here. I would love to hear from you—looking back on what we've seen transpire in the last six months, what advice do you have for organizations' sales and marketing leaders (VP of Sales and Marketing, CIOs, CEOs). What advice do you have for them, considering what engagement looks like for their audiences moving forward?
Kimberly Schmitz:
You know, we've learned that no one had any idea as to the degree of what was going to happen, with everything just coming to a stop. So, we saw people just having to jump on things and keep them moving.
Now leaders have some time to really assess what it is we really want to do—"What is our strategy here?”—but then also be open to new ideas, new technology and thinking very differently. They’re getting their teams to brainstorm and think big.
I think we are also seeing teams recalibrate, too. Internal event teams are really having to determine how to restructure themselves. Asking themselves what skills they need and how do they support more of this digital engagement strategy. It’s not just a “one and done” live event—it can go on for weeks or months and that’s the great part about it.
One of the biggest things that has changed is audience acquisition. The ways that marketing teams got audiences to come to their event is probably not going to work going forward. You're dealing with a lot of different things that are imposing on their time and attention.
What are those things you need to do differently to get people to attend your digital event, instead of the millions of others out there? When you think differently about that, it allows you to consider different audiences that you didn't reach before—or even thought about.
Also...start small—you don't have to push out a brand-new technology for 15,000 people. Start small, see what the reaction is. Test the waters and be open to new ideas.
Erica Spoor:
That is great advice. I love what you are saying—let’s dive into that a bit more. One of the things we’re seeing is this interesting shift, not just in how people are deploying their digital experiences, but also in their mindset around it.
When we first saw events in March, it was a flip—get it done. We still saw live recorded events with speakers in a live setting, like a broadcast production. As restrictions tightened, there was a shift to one- or two-day conferences in immersive platforms and we saw a lot of limitations with that. A lot of people experienced outages and people had challenges with the tech platform. That was hard to watch.
Then we saw the later groups learn quickly from that and we began to see a multi-week digital conference strategy—which we saw Google Cloud Next OnAir use recently—as well as more broadcast strategies, like ServiceNow in May released more of a broadcast-oriented digital experience, followed by another one in June. We’ve seen a lot of significant evolution in just six months. Part of this is related to what you just described. The reach is so massive now. Events where you used to have a really confined audience that had to overcome barriers to travel, expense, and time out of the office—it’s now right there at your desktop.
Kimberly Schmitz:
The reach is a huge benefit to this. Not only global (if you get creative with your format)... Now, you can go global, then go smaller with very specific speakers tailored to specific audiences and shift back to regional and then shift back to global. People are starting to get more creative because now they are realizing what their reach can possibly be. That is a big benefit of the digital format.
Erica Spoor:
I think we are also seeing teams recalibrate, too. Internal event teams are really having to determine how to restructure themselves. Asking themselves what skills they need and how do they support more of this digital engagement strategy. It’s not just a “one and done” live event—it can go on for weeks or months and that’s the great part about it. You can syndicate content after the experience, you can run it before the event, you could repurpose it for a whole other event series. We’re just seeing event teams really change how they show up in the organization.
Kimberly Schmitz:
Absolutely. Now you can put that content somewhere where people can access it regularly and utilize it in different parts of the marketing mix.
Erica Spoor:
I think the other thing we are noticing is that digital events are cheaper. I mean, they cost a lot less. We’ll see how it plays out. Over time, we’re going to go back to in-person. We’re humans—we crave that human connection. Right now, I’m sure CMOs are saying, “Wait a minute. I could take that budget we used for in-person events, we could put that toward digital engagement and get even a broader reach." I think that pendulum is going to swing back, but it is definitely one of the considerations.
Kimberly Schmitz:
Yes, you and I have talked about this before—the way we do business is going to change, because it had to change. Once we get back to in-person events, I think companies will realize that we don’t need to put their salesperson on a plane and get them across the country to meet with one person. We can start to do more things digitally. You may not need to go to six in-person conferences. It could very much be that you go to three in-person and three digital conferences. If you’re going for training, you can still get that content for certifications. The one thing that is missing, which I know everyone is looking forward to, is the networking piece.
Erica Spoor: Absolutely.
Kimberly Schmitz:
And maybe that becomes the value proposition for in-person events—now you get to network in-person. “...Remember what that was like? Welcome back!” Perhaps that is what the in-person events begin to market.
Erica Spoor:
That is such a great point. It really requires you to revisit that value proposition and really look at how you differentiate what you do digitally and what you offer in-person.
Kimberly Schmitz: Yes, there’s no reason you can’t do both, right?
Erica Spoor:
Right. I think digital will be a foundation now. If anything, it just accelerated people’s roadmaps around doing something digital. It will be interesting to see. People are already getting creative with what they are doing, especially with monetization.
One of the big questions for a lot of our clients is “Should I charge for my event?” When we saw the first events go live in March, everyone offered them for free. There was a ton of concern about getting people to attend and getting them online and engaged, so they were all free out of the gate. We’re seeing that change. What have you observed?
Kimberly Schmitz:
If you are just attending for the basics, those things are still free. We’re now seeing organizers charge for specific training or sessions, or if there’s some type of exclusive connect with leadership. In our audit, we’re seeing registration fees from as low as $59–89, all the way up to $500. There are some outlier events that are still looking at a $2,500 fee to attend digitally. It will be very interesting to see how far those organizers can push attendees to pay. There might be some questioning of that. Look, I am competing with so many other things in my home now, am I really going to be able to get the value if I get pulled away? It makes sense, though, it creates exclusivity for special sessions, training and certifications. It could even create some FOMO and generate content you can use afterward to create smaller events from bigger events.
Erica Spoor:
Yes, and it comes back to strategy. I really believe that strategy should drive that decision. There are some people that will absolutely not charge because they want brand awareness and broad reach, but those with an established event with a lot of brand equity are going to retain that value by charging. There’s a lot more on monetization in our Digital Event Forecast.
Okay, switching gears. Now, with you joining our organization, we now offer high-touch event management services. Do you want to talk about that a bit?
Kimberly Schmitz:
The advantage of doing high-touch events is with smaller groups of people, under 500 attendees. There tends to be more exclusivity to it and content is more specific to that target audience. You can utilize that approach for very targeted objectives, like moving deals through the pipeline. You can see that return on investment a lot faster than you would in an event with 10,000 people. It’s much more curated.
And it’s not just event planning and the management. We’re taking a look at the whole thing, starting from strategy and design, making sure we’re designing the right type of high-touch event. It’s about the experience, from beginning to end, with much smaller groups. When we return to in-person events, we’ll see these first.
Erica Spoor:
Right—smaller, safer. Absolutely.
Okay, well, that is all the time we have today. Thank you, Kim!
And, for others, if you want to learn more about what’s happening in the industry with regard to digital events, the IPG Digital Event Forecast will be available this week. Kim and I will be out again on future Facebook Live broadcasts.
Thanks for joining us!
Like IPG on Facebook to be notified of our next Facebook Live conversation and stay up-to-date on all of our analysis and commentary. Visit impactpointgroup.com to see the latest version of our ongoing Digital Event Forecast, with more observations on how the event industry is responding to COVID-19 and our forecast of what’s to come.
—Erica Spoor